Twins in life, twins in death: Urba and Zain’s final moments cut short by Pak shellfire in J&K’s Poonch

They came into the world just five minutes apart — Urba Fatima first, then Zain Ali — and for twelve beautiful years, they moved through life as if tethered by an invisible thread. Laughing, playing, studying side by side in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district, the twins were inseparable.

But on the morning of May 7, as their town awoke to the thunder of cross-border shelling, that thread was violently and tragically cut. Within minutes of each other — just as they had arrived in the world—Urba and Zain took their last breaths.

“They died together. It was as if one couldn’t go without the other,” said a relative, his voice trembling.

The attack, launched by Pakistan amid rising tensions following a deadly terror strike that killed 26 people — mostly tourists — left behind a trail of devastation. Around two dozen killed in Jammu and Kashmir border towns were mostly civilians, and heartbreakingly, these two children.

Their father, Rameez Khan, a schoolteacher, was severely injured. Poonch bore the brunt of the violence, accounting for 16 of the total fatalities.

Urba and Zain had only recently moved to Poonch from Kalai village with their parents, Rameez and Urusa Khan. It was a decision made out of love — driven by their parents’ desire to give them access to better education. They had just celebrated their 12th birthday.

“They were in Class 4 at Christ School,” a local, Irfan Ahmad recalls. “They were so happy. So full of life.”

That morning, Ahmad received a panicked call from the children. “They were scared. They asked me to come and take them away.” He rushed to their rented home, arriving at 6:45 am, just as shelling intensified.

As he called out for them to run, Urba, Zain, and Rameez stepped outside. That’s when the shell struck — its explosion ending two young lives and shattering a family forever.

“I didn’t have time to think. I bundled them into my car and drove to the hospital,” Ahmad says. “But it was too late. The doctors said the children were already gone.”

Rameez was still breathing, though barely. He was moved through hospitals — first to Rajouri, then to Jammu — for urgent treatment. He finally regained consciousness on May 10, the same day India and Pakistan reached a ceasefire agreement.

But the cruelest twist of fate is that Rameez still doesn’t know. He doesn’t know that his children — his shadows — are gone.

“We haven’t told him,” Ahmad says quietly. “His condition is still serious. There’s shrapnel in his liver. When he asks for them, grieving mother Urusa tells him they’re with their nani.”

For Urusa, each passing moment is unbearable. In the span of hours, she buried her children and now sits at her husband’s bedside, pretending — holding together a truth too heavy for any mother to bear.

In the face of this unfathomable loss, Poonch has shown resilience and unity.

Meanwhile, in the silence of a small rented home in Poonch, the echoes of Urba and Zain’s laughter are gone. All that remains is grief, and a family struggling to hold on — waiting for the right time to speak the hardest truth of all.